Alice's POV
I am standing in the middle of the training room in the institute throwing knives at a human shaped target. Demons typically take on a human form to better blend in with everyone so that is what we have as our target. I throw knife after knife, changing my style of throwing and where on the body I am trying to hit. I get a good number of throws in before Sebastian shows up and ruins it, as usual.
"Train with me." He says in a demanding tone.
"Why should I? Training with you is boring. I get nothing out of it so whats the point."
"I need someone to train with and you are the only one."
"You could always go and train with Violet or Lily."
"They are children! I am not going to train with children!"
"Why not? You act and fight like a child. I am not seeing a problem here."
He looks at me with anger. "Train. With. Me." He says with a new found determination in his voice.
I sigh, but grab my seraph blade and walk into the sparring area. He looks at me warily.
"You wanted to train. Let's train." I say as I press the button on the hilt so that the second blade comes out.
"Okay. One rule though, you can only have one blade. One for me, one for you. "
"Deal." I press the button again to reduce my weapon to one blade. "First one to hit the other three times wins."
We get in fighting stances and start slowly circling each other. He lunges out at me and his blade only misses my forearm by a few centimeters. I retaliate and cut a semi deep gash on his fighting shoulder. He yelps and jumps back to put distance between us and then we go back to circling each other. He rushes at me again and this time swings me my knees. I jump over his blade and move forward to get him in the bicep, but he dives out of the way and rolls. The second he stands back up he attacks again and our blades meet with a crash. We pushed against each other with all of our strength, but I know that he is much stronger than I and my strength would soon fail. I step to the side as I move my blade out of the way and he goes tumbling to the floor. I decide that this is a good teachable moment for him. A movement in the corner caught my eye and I see Violet watching us. Good. She can learn from this as well. I stand up a little straighter and look down at him as he scrambles about on the floor.
"What did you do wrong?" I ask him
"What!?" He says.
"What did you do wrong? Why was I able to best you?"
"You weren't! You just got lucky!"
"Tsk tsk. Your pride is getting the better of you. It is okay to admit defeat."
"You did not defeat me! You have to get three! I have only been cut twice!"
He stands and comes at me again. As we fight I talk to him and tell him pointers.
"Your form is sloppy... Don't let anger and pride control you... You fight every enemy as if they are one and the same, but they are not. Each enemy is different and you must fight them as such. You study them when you can and as quick as you can and you figure out how you need to fight to defeat them. Don't be predictable. We should be able to predict each others movements by now and therefore neither of us should be able to best the other in combat and yet you continuously fail to study my fighting techniques and habits. It makes it much easier for me to best you in battle which makes you that much more boring to fight." I say and then I swipe at his feet. He jumps and does a back flip. When he lands he is next to a rack of blades so he picks up another one as I swing my sword up, hoping to get a cut on his chest. He uses the blades to stop mine and push it back down. He smiles victoriously at me even though he is far from winning. I spin my blade downwards and hit the button at the same time. As my blade hit his they were both knocked out of his hands. I smile at him.
"Two for you, two for me." I tell him as he picks his blades back up.
I wield my blade expertly and manage to get a cut on his hand as he gets one on my chin. I put my blade down and smile at him.
"I win." I say
"You cheated." He tries to argue, "I said only one blade."
"Yes you did. Your exact words were, 'One for me, one for you.' , but then you went and grabbed a second blade. That gave me permission to have two as well.
"Whatever."
"Do you know why you lost?"
"Why?" He says sarcastically and even though I can tell he doesn't care I tell him.
"I have had years to study you. How you fight, how you stand, walk, eat, sleep, everything. You have had the same amount of time to study me as well but you have chosen to ignore that advantage and instead you fight me as if I were any other opponent. I can defeat you easily because I know almost everything about you whereas you don't think that it is worth your time to learn anything about me."
"It isn't worth my time."
"Yes it is. You are stupid, arrogant, and an awful shadowhunter because you choose to ignore the intelligence that is needed to do our job."
He looks at me with pure rage shown all over his face. I have pissed him off. He stomps up to me and tries to hit me but I grab his arms as they come at me and then us them to spin him around so that his back is facing me and his arms are behind him. I kick the back of his knees and he falls to the floor.
"I wont train with you until you learn this. Training with you is boring and not beneficial at all." I let go of his arms and push him down to the ground in front of me. "Come and see me when you have actually learned something and will make a worthy opponent for me."
He looks frustrated and humiliated as he hears the girls, Lily and Violet, giggling in the corner. He stands up and walks towards the rack of spears and throws himself against the wall right next to it. After hitting the wall he falls to the floor with a loud thud as the spears that he had hit with his foot fall all over him. I hear footsteps running down the stairs, a normal reaction to hearing that loud of a thud. I quickly realize why he had done that and run over to him to make it look like I am trying to help him up. He swats my arm away as I try to get him up and then he smiles victoriously at me. I hear the door swing open as Sebastian lets out a loud groan. I turn around to see his parents standing in the doorway along with mine. His mother runs to his side to make sure that her precious little child isn't hurt (that was sarcasm if you couldnt tell). I look at his father who glares at me as if I am the devil himself and then pushes past me to get to him as well. When I look at my parents my father gives a sorry look to tell me that he doesn't think I did anything wrong, whereas my mother glares at me almost as hateful as his father did except hers had shame in it as well. She was ashamed of me. Ashamed that I would do something so stupid and childish as to push him into a rack of spears. I turn away from that look and find Sebastian telling his parents what happened.
"We were training and when I beat her she got all upset and threw me against the wall. I hit the rack on my way down and all the spears fell on me."
"What! That's not true I was trying to give him tips on his fighting style and technique to help him get better, but after I beat him he did this to himself to make me look bad!"
"Its true! We saw it ourselves!" Violet says, standing up for me. I give her a thankful smile and turn back towards Sebastian's parents who looked very pissed off.
"Don't lie to us just to stand up for your overly violent sister. She needs to learn to control herself before my son gets seriously injured" Sebastian's mom says to my parents.
"Violet wasn't lying! What Alice said is true!" Lily says, trying to help out.
"And you! I know you are best friends but that doesn't mean its okay to lie for your parabatai!" Sebastian's father yells
"We aren't lying!" Violet says.
Sebastian's father turns to mine. "You need to learn to control your daughters! One of them is a liar and the other is violent child who is going to wind up getting someone killed!"
I see a blur of motion that rushes right by his father's head. He gives a wild angry glare at Violet who threw the knife.
"I am not a liar. My sister is not a child, nor is she violent. That little brat of yours over there is just too arrogant to accept defeat like a man. He did this to himself to make my sister look bad when in reality, he's just a baby throwing a temper tantrum." She says in a soft, deadly voice.
Sebastian's father stares at her, mouth agape, unable to respond. His mother on the other hand was able to respond.
"How dare you! How dare you disrespect my husband like that! Who taught you that it was okay to behave in such a way!" She turns to our parents, " My family is in danger due to your children! You need to see to it that they are severely punished!"
"Now, now, Linette. I am sure that severe punishment is not necessary."
"'Not necessary'? Your eldest daughter just shoved my son into the wall and cause the spears to fall on him! One of those could have stabbed him somewhere! Then your youngest daughter threw a knife at my husbands face! This isn't the first time either! A couple months ago Alice cut Sebastian's neck! He could have died! Though I will admit that this is the first time that Violet has acted this far out of place, Alice has been in this situation far too often!"
I could tell by the look on my fathers face that he wouldn't be able to get me out of this one. I look at Violet who smiles at me apologetically. I smile back and turn to face the Verlac's. I take a deep breath, put on a neutral face, straighten my back, and do my best to appear as if I am unaffected my the situation.
"Very well then Linette. What do you suppose the punishment should be?"
She looks towards her husband who nods his head at her, giving her his support. She turns back to my father, looks him straight in the face and says, "I suggest that she leaves the institute."